A partnership for district & school leaders

Math professional learning that shows up in your scores.

We grow teachers as mathematicians first. That is the only sequence that has ever moved student math achievement - and we price ourselves against the result.

0% → 67%
on grade level, kindergarten pilot
54%
proficient in 7th grade, against 4%
15/15
teachers rated it five stars
The Problem

You have invested in math.
The scores have not followed.

Districts have likely invested tens of billions of dollars - an estimated $40-70 billion on math PD in the last decade. NAEP scores are declining. This is happening everywhere.

Workshops that never reach Monday

Research finds PD under roughly 14 hours has no measurable effect on student learning. Most PD is one-off.

Yoon et al., IES 2007

New materials, same instruction

Districts adopt new curriculum cycle after cycle. The materials change. The classroom does not.

The pattern every leader recognizes

Coaching without a mechanism

Support without a clear model for changing how teachers facilitate math discourse produces nothing durable.

The gap no vendor talks about
The problem is not effort or spend. It is that most math PD was never designed to change what happens in classrooms.
The Root Cause

It is not the curriculum.
It is the instruction.

Your kids will not do better
than your teachers can do.

Decades of research converge on one finding: teacher mathematical understanding and facilitation skill are the mechanism. Materials do not teach. Teachers do.

The Research

Teacher content knowledge is the single strongest school-level predictor of student math achievement.

Hill, Rowan & Ball (2005) — “Effects of Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching on Student Achievement,” American Educational Research Journal. One of the most-cited studies in math education.

Most math PD trains teachers on materials. This one grows them as mathematicians.
The Through Line

How math scores actually move.

Start hereConfident math teachers
Which createsReal classroom discourse
Which producesStudents who reason
Which movesScores that move

This is the only sequence that has ever worked.
This program is built on it — end to end.

The Shift

From consumers of math to producers of mathematics.

School mathematics today

The Consumer

  • Rewards memorizing disparate procedures
  • Rewards algorithm deployment over understanding
  • Treats math as a static pile of skills and facts
  • Measures only the answer
  • Assumes math must be made interesting for the learner
Mathematics as a discipline

The Producer

  • Contributes to a knowledge-building community
  • Thinks critically, works collaboratively, communicates ideas
  • Sees math as a network of interconnected ideas
  • Values the reasoning process over the answer
  • Finds math interesting and relevant of itself
Teachers cannot grow producer classrooms until they have experienced mathematics as producers themselves. That is what this PD does.
The Unlock

The math that actually moves scores.

Three things separate math that sticks from math that does not. The PD is built to install all three.

Thought
Exercises

The core move

A prompt the whole room has to reason through together. No procedure. No shortcut. No back of the book.

A Thought Exercise, for example

8(7) + 5 ______ √9 + 7 · 8

Compare these expressions. Insert >, <, or =. Convince the room.

No procedure to retrieve, no shortcut to hide behind. Teachers reason from what the numbers are - and defend that reasoning to colleagues. Then they learn to facilitate the same discourse with students.

Watch a Thought Exercise in action

Generative Math Learning Framework · ©2025 Moore and Lewis

Why it works
01

Dialogical

Students argue. Students explain. Students change their minds because a classmate made a better case - not because the teacher said so. Math becomes something you do with other people.

02

Rooted in first principles

No memorized procedures. Every claim has to trace back to what the numbers actually are. Students who reason from first principles can rebuild the procedure any time. Students who only memorized it are stuck the moment the problem does not match the template.

03

Reasoning over answers

The room is the judge. A right answer without a defense does not count. A wrong answer well-defended teaches everyone something. Mathematical thinking gets grown out loud, under pressure, in front of peers.

Proof · Student Outcomes

Kindergarten pilot:
0% to 67% on grade level.

This is what happens when teachers become mathematicians first.

17%
25%
FallSpring
Non-pilot classrooms
+8 points
0%
67%
FallSpring
Pilot classrooms
+67 points
8×

the growth of comparison classrooms - starting from further behind. Pilot students began the year with zero students at grade level and ended with two-thirds on grade level, as measured by the i-Ready Math Diagnostic.

% of students on / above grade level · i-Ready Math Diagnostic

Proof · At Scale

It holds up in middle school, too.

4%
54%
Non-pilotPilot
7th Grade
% of students proficient
0%
29%
Non-pilotPilot
8th Grade
% of students proficient
54% vs 4%

In pilot classrooms, over half of 7th graders reached proficiency against 4% in non-pilot rooms. In 8th grade, pilot classrooms took proficiency from zero to 29% - in a school where no non-pilot 8th grader tested proficient.

School-wide, students in the program made a median of 157% of typical annual growth, with 69% improving their placement level.

% proficient by grade · Phillips Middle · i-Ready · Edgecombe County, NC · 2024–2025

Proof · Teacher Buy-In

Every teacher gave it five stars.
That almost never happens.

15/15★★★★★

On an anonymous post-survey administered by the district - not by us.

Challenged me to unlearn math so I could relearn it.
Participating teacher
Got my staff into the work and language of math.
Principal · Summer 2026 cohort
There is more than one way to do math. The process is more important than the answer.
Participating teacher

Anonymous post-survey · administered by the district · Summer 2026 immersive

Don't take the survey's word for it - do the mathematics.

Priced at cost · 45-minute conversation first

The Program

Sustained by design - not another one-off.

Year One · Build It

Grow teachers' mathematics

  • 18-hour summer immersive before school starts - teachers experience the framework as learners, flexibly scheduled over 2-5 days
  • Sustained workshops through the school year - full-day or half-day, a mix of in-person and virtual, each building on the immersive
  • Teachers meet regularly as a knowledge-building community, doing real mathematics together between sessions
Our Year One commitment

Students grow faster than a typical year - driven by teachers who teach conceptually and not just procedurally.

Year Two · Own It

Grow leaders you keep

  • 6-12 teachers selected as emerging instructional leaders from the Year One cohort
  • A second 18-hour immersive focused on designing and facilitating Thought Exercises in their own classrooms
  • Weekly virtual coaching with video-based feedback, plus 2-4 in-person observation and planning days
By the end of Year Two

Acceleration compounds - and the instructional expertise stays inside your district.

The capacity is yours when the engagement ends.
Between the Workshops

The impromptu rehearsal room.

A proprietary app that lets teachers practice facilitation with AI students and an AI coach before running the lesson live.

Facilitation practice · fractions discourse● session active
AI Student · Maya8/9 is bigger because 9 is a bigger number than 8.
AI Student · JeremyBut 7/8 has bigger pieces. Bigger pieces should mean it's bigger.
You (Teacher)Jeremy, say more about that. Maya - does it change your thinking?
AI CoachGood - you put the claim back between them instead of settling it yourself. Now press Maya to say what the denominator is, not just which number is bigger.

Where facilitation gets grown

Teachers step into a live math discussion with two AI students holding real misconceptions. Not homework. Not video. Impromptu rehearsal with "students".

An expert coach beside you

Every session comes with an in-the-moment coach trained on Kevin Moore's method - his moves, his diagnostic questions, his way of pressing on reasoning.

Unlimited practice, zero risk

Unlimited practice, zero risk to real students. Teachers can try the harder move, misfire, and run it again - no class period spent finding out.

Leaders see the growth happen

Every rehearsal produces data. See which teachers are engaging, which are growing, and who your emerging instructional leaders are.

Partnership technology roadmap · piloting with founding districts
Who's Behind This

Designed by the person who got these results.

Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore

Mathematics Model & Proven Outcomes

Co-founder of Long-View, a school in Austin, Texas with world-renowned mathematics outcomes, and The Number Lab, which supports schools in transforming K-8 math instruction. Kevin has 30 years of experience teaching mathematics, has coached hundreds of educators, and co-created the Generative Math Learning Framework. He is also a published author on mathematics instruction and led the Edgecombe County implementation featured throughout this site.

Amber Dhanani

Amber Dhanani

Teacher Development, Research & AI-Enabled Math

Former K-8 math and science teacher and Director of Teacher Growth and Learning. Amber has coached 50+ educators, delivered more than 240 hours of professional learning, and led schoolwide math implementation through modeling, co-planning, and data-informed coaching. She now leads educator research and AI product work with Stanford University and ISTE+ASCD and secured $150,000 from NewSchools Venture Fund to develop an AI-powered mathematics tutor.

Ryan York

Ryan York

District Leadership, Technology & Scale

Former math and science teacher, principal, Director of Academics, CIO, and charter-school co-founder and CEO; now Co-Founder and Chief Product & Technology Officer of an education technology platform. Ryan led academic programming that outperformed neighboring districts by 135%, built instructional systems serving 10,000+ students, and scaled curriculum and teacher training to more than 100 public schools across eight states - including Nashville's largest charter-district instructional partnership.

Investment

Priced to say yes to.

Year One Partnership
$40,000

per cohort of 20 · teachers, coaches, SPED, admin - you choose the mix

  • Includes the full summer immersive and all school-year workshops
  • Neighboring schools can share summer immersives - same fidelity, shared logistics
  • Year Two instructional-leadership tier priced as an add-on for continuing schools
  • Sized to sit inside existing PD and Title II budgets - no board-approval gauntlet
Our guarantee

We put our money where our math is.

50%back if you’re not satisfied with the work - no thresholds to hit, no fine print.

You decide whether the year was worth it. No other math PD stands behind itself that way.

Compare it to what you're buying now

Sending one teacher to a national conference - flight, hotel, registration, a sub back home - easily runs $2,000-4,000. That buys a binder and a good week. This buys a year that keeps teaching after it ends.

And it compounds

Year Two turns your strongest teachers into in-house facilitators. Every year after, the expertise is on your payroll - not ours.

Questions leaders ask

A Year One partnership is $40,000 for a cohort of 20 - an 18-hour summer immersive before school starts, plus sustained full-day and half-day workshops through the school year, in person and virtual. You choose the cohort mix: teachers, coaches, SPED, administrators. Year Two, which grows 6-12 of those teachers into in-house instructional leaders, is priced as an add-on for continuing schools.

Most math PD trains teachers on materials. This grows teachers as mathematicians. Research finds PD under roughly 14 hours has no measurable effect on student learning, so the program starts at 18 hours and continues across the year. And it targets the actual mechanism: what teachers understand mathematically and how they facilitate discourse.

A prompt the whole room has to reason through together, with no procedure to retrieve and no back of the book. Teachers reason from what the numbers are and defend that reasoning to colleagues - then learn to facilitate the same discourse with their students. It is the core move of the Generative Math Learning Framework.

In a kindergarten pilot, students went from 0% on grade level in the fall to 67% in the spring, against comparison classrooms that moved 17% to 25% - eight times the growth, starting from further behind. At Phillips Middle in Edgecombe County, NC, 54% of 7th graders in pilot classrooms reached proficiency against 4% in non-pilot rooms, and 8th grade went from zero to 29%. School-wide, students made a median of 157% of typical annual growth. All measured on the i-Ready Math Diagnostic.

We return 50% of your investment if you are not satisfied with the work. There are no thresholds to hit and no fine print - you decide whether the year was worth it.

An 18-hour summer immersive before school starts, flexibly scheduled across 2-5 days, then sustained workshops through the school year in full-day or half-day blocks, mixing in-person and virtual. Between sessions, teachers meet as a knowledge-building community and do real mathematics together.

No. This is not a curriculum adoption, and it does not replace your materials. It changes how teachers understand the mathematics in whatever materials you already use, and how they run the conversation in the room.

It is a teacher tool, not a student one. Between workshops, teachers practice facilitating a live math discussion with AI students holding real misconceptions and an AI coach trained on Kevin Moore’s method. Leaders get visibility into who is practicing and who is growing. It is on the partnership technology roadmap and is currently piloting with founding districts.

It is sized to sit inside existing PD and Title II budgets, which is deliberate - most districts can approve it without a board-approval gauntlet. For comparison, sending a single teacher to a national conference typically runs $2,000-4,000 once you count travel, registration, and a substitute.

Yes, and we recommend it. Start with a 45-minute conversation with your leadership team, then book a half-day session for your leaders and math teachers, priced at cost. Most leadership teams describe the half-day as the moment they got convinced - because they do the mathematics themselves.

How We Start

A small first yes - not a leap.

Start with a 45-minute conversation. Nothing about this partnership asks you to commit before you have seen the mathematics for yourself.

1

A conversation

45 minutes with your leadership team. We learn your math data and priorities; you pressure-test ours.

2

Book the half-day

A half-day session for your leaders and math teachers. Priced at cost. Don't take the survey's word for it - do the mathematics. Most leadership teams describe it as the moment they got convinced.

3

Summer immersive

Lock a summer window for your first cohort of schools, and start the school year with teachers who are already teaching differently.

Limited summer windows - lock yours early

Start the conversation

Tell us where you lead and what your math data looks like. No sales sequence - one person reads this and replies.

Or email ryan@mathrootstutoring.com directly.